7 ms·

that chart does not make sense to me unless >10% of Americans are AA. I can't think of anyone, besides non-drinking Alcoholics, that have less than 1 drink/wk

Wohlf 5y ago
Is it really that hard to imagine some people just don't have much of a desire to drink? I go pretty long stretches without drinking.
barry-cotter 5y ago
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them. Quoted by Israel Shenker, "Critics Here Focus on Films As Language Conference Opens," The New York Times (1972-12-28) Often quoted as "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"; referring to George McGovern's loss to Richard Nixon in in the 1972 presidential election.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I can't think of anyone, besides non-drinking Alcoholics, that have less than 1 drink/wk Most people I associate with don’t drink anything on an average week. It’s likely that you’re in a bit of a bubble if you can’t think of anyone who doesn’t drink in an average week.
- buu700 5y ago
  Yeah, that's an odd statement to me. I don't not drink, but I also don't go out of my way to drink that often. Even considering the mean rather than median, I'm pretty sure that I fall short of 52 drinks/year. I wouldn't necessarily assume that I'm in the majority, but it's not as though my behavior in this area is particularly abnormal.
  - Marsymars 5y ago
    I get how one could pretty easily fall into a group of people who drink on a weekly (or more frequent) basis. That being said, of people I'm close to, my parents are a good counter-example. They split one beer every month or so.
    - bigfudge 5y ago
      Out of interest. What do people do at social occasions? What would you do if you met a friend after work on a Friday night? I think we need better options for this in the Uk... most cafes shut and not drinking in a pub still feels weird (and soft drinks are so sweet)
      - yakubin 5y ago
        Pole here. I only drink when I go out with someone, or have a party. Mostly wine, once a couple years vodka. Occasionally, when I have company during lunch, we drink one glass of wine to it. Oftentimes though, when I invite someone over, we don't drink alcohol, I make lemonade or tea. Lemonade with matcha and ice cubes is a great replacement. Maybe more places should offer lemonade? PS. It's not uncommon for me to drink 3 glasses of wine a year. Although recently I've been more social, so it's been 1-2 glasses of wine every 1-2 weeks. I don't go out of my way to drink alcohol, but I also don't avoid it.
      - Marsymars 5y ago
        I've never had much trouble getting alcohol-free drinks at pubs/bars in Canada. More hip places usually have alcohol-free options (alcohol-free beer/cocktails, kombucha, etc.), and less hip places will at least have some kind of bagged herbal tea if you're avoiding caffeine. Bars/pubs will pretty much always have coffee too, even if it's not especially good.
bitexploder 5y ago
I do pretty demanding sport as a hobby. Even one drink during the week greatly impacts recovery and ability to perform and lessens my enjoyment considerably. It’s rather commons in my circles for people to probably average a handful of drinks per year at most.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  If one drink/wk is noticeably affecting you then you're either a professional athlete who's got world class people monitoring their performance or you need to see a doctor. Edit: Assuming the standard definition of drink that's roughly equivalent to one light beer or one shot
  - ubercow13 5y ago
    Why? I do a minimal amount of exercise and I can feel the difference if I had one drink the night before. Forget exercise, it’s obvious I had a drink the night before from how I feel as soon as I wake up, just from the degree to which alcohol negatively effects quality of sleep.
  - bitexploder 5y ago
    It’s not like I suddenly break down or something. There are a few factors in my sport. BJJ is mostly cardio so I sweat a lot. I train at or close to my limits most of the time. Recovery isn’t as easy at 41. Alcohol depletes just enough from my body and impedes recovery just enough that the next day, I won’t be 100%, and I’ll feel it. Even one drink in the evening is massively disruptive to sleep processes like REM sleep. It depletes key nutrients from muscles, etc. so maybe I’m just a little slower. Then there is the cramping. Replenishing electrolytes when you leak as much of them as I do is hard. There is a really good chance I will get a moderate to severe cramp if I drank the night before. I think you are underestimating how significant a drink can be to someone training hard. Especially someone older, such as myself. You have to make a very large number of assumptions to arrive at your conclusion that is obviously incorrect for many athletes hobbyist or otherwise. Some guys can pull it off, and there are a few in my gym who can drink hard, come in hungover and survive a hard training session. That isn’t me or most people I know (anecdotally).
DeRock 5y ago
I have many friends (and family) most of whom are in no way an alcoholic in AA, that hardly ever (or never) drink. Some just don't enjoy the effects, some prefer not to for health reasons, some just honestly prefer to smoke a joint. The fact that you can't think of a single person like that is equally surprising to me.
dylan604 5y ago
Hi! Nice to meet you. There are weeks when I have 0 drinks per week, and then others where I have lots more. It all depends on mood and activities. Specifically if the smoker is running.
- sqqqqrly 5y ago
  I'm with you brother. Life is too short. My neighbors and I have been doing Friday night happy hours for almost a year, always outside. Many with a fire going and outside movies shown on the side of my RV. The 6 of us look forward to these. Personally, I couldn't care less what others think of this or how "sustainable" this is.
  - jasondigitized 5y ago
    Some might argue life is too short to drink. I personally arrived at that conclusion. To each his own.
hpoe 5y ago
Well for starters you've got all the Muslims and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sometimes know as Mormons. That's two big ole' swathes of people who probably don't drink at all.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  Then you have pregnant women, and women who are trying to conceive, and sometimes their partners will also give up drinking in solidarity....
  - mark-r 5y ago
    My wife asked me to stop drinking while she was pregnant, and I complied. I think it backfired though, because I drank more after she gave birth than I ever did before.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
A lot of people don't like alcoholic beverages at all. I have member of my family that despise the taste of alcohol. Then, we have people like myself, and my father, whom self medicate. (I hate the taste of all alcohol. I only drink it for the effect. To the problem drinkers out there, don't even think about going to hard alcohol. Stick to low alcohol beer, and wine. Box wine can have as little as 9% alcohol. Naltrexone seems to help with the cravings if you need to stop.)
- pstuart 5y ago
  Kratom is a great replacement for alcohol for such use. It has its abuse potential as well, but is zero calorie and hangover-free and doesn't damage your liver. Of course everybody responds differently, but it's been incredibly valuable to me for this need.
ska 5y ago
May be an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
mythrwy 5y ago
I drink but don't have one drink a week. The vast majority of weeks I have 0 drinks. Once in a great while I might have a couple of drinks (if I'm in the mood) but it's not a regular thing at all. I'm not morally opposed to it and I'm certainly not an alcoholic, I just don't care much for or about it. It's kind of a low level toxin and it feels like it. Is this really that strange? I know a lot of people that very rarely drink and certainly don't habitually, but will have a drink on occasion.
vincent-toups 5y ago
I'm not a non-drinker but I would say I have less than one drink in a typical 4 month period.
munificent 5y ago
I am a drinker. I am very fond of beer, whiskey, and wine. I love the taste of all three. I have a well-stocked liquor cabinet and always have a few beers in the fridge and bottle or wine or two in the kitchen. Even so, in the past few years, I typically consume less than one drink per week. I used to have a nightcap or a beer with dinner pretty frequently. The dinner beer tapered off because I found it made me too sleepy to be on the ball with the evening routine with the kids. The nightcaps started to feel like pointless calories. So these days, I might have a beer or whiskey on the weekend when I watch a movie with my wife. But I rarely drink during the week, and often don't on the weekend. Granted, part of that is from having no ability to socialize the past year. I imagine my consumption will tick up soon. But I still don't expect it to get to more than one or two drinks per week.
dcolkitt 5y ago
Older people drink significantly less than the young. By age 65, more than half Americans are teetotalers.
- bigfudge 5y ago
  This is partly why alcohol epidemiology is so hard. People drink less in ways correlated with their general health.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  By age 65, most heavy drinkers are dead. I once used to visit my friend in a rehab (he pulled it off and now is sober). There were no people over 55 actually, though some 40-somethings looked seventy on the outside. "Oh, either you get sober or you die way, way earlier than the general population," said the nurse when I asked her where the old-timers are. To fit the pattern, my grandpa, a functional alcoholic, died at 57. His brother, who was much more careful with his drink, lived to 87.
jejones3141 5y ago
I wouldn't hazard a guess about the general population based on the people I know. I can, though, talk about my experience. I grew up in what's called the "Bible Belt", so that may have something to do with my not drinking. I had what might be a common experience--as a child expressing curiosity about a beer a relative was drinking, being offered a sip, and spitting it out in disgust, with no interest in a second taste. Much later, a friend invited me and other friends over to a very nice dinner with appropriate wine served with each course. It was good, and all seemed well... until I noticed that I was singing Tom Lehrer's "Masochism Tango" at high volume. The next day what freaked me out was that at every stage I thought myself under control, but clearly I had lost it. I did not want a repetition. Since then I found that there is good tasting beer; I tried a little at a restaurant where they brewed it themselves--but I only tried it the once and didn't finish it. Later I heard that occasional red wine was supposedly good for one's health, and for a while ordered a glass periodically, but I couldn't make myself finish it. Haven't had any for a long time, and now the prescriptions I take preclude further drinking. (Maybe aging baby boomers on prescription drugs bend the curve?)

Wohlf 5y ago

Is it really that hard to imagine some people just don't have much of a desire to drink? I go pretty long stretches without drinking.

barry-cotter 5y ago

I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them. Quoted by Israel Shenker, "Critics Here Focus on Films As Language Conference Opens," The New York Times (1972-12-28) Often quoted as "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"; referring to George McGovern's loss to Richard Nixon in in the 1972 presidential election.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> I can't think of anyone, besides non-drinking Alcoholics, that have less than 1 drink/wk Most people I associate with don’t drink anything on an average week. It’s likely that you’re in a bit of a bubble if you can’t think of anyone who doesn’t drink in an average week.

buu700 5y ago
Yeah, that's an odd statement to me. I don't not drink, but I also don't go out of my way to drink that often. Even considering the mean rather than median, I'm pretty sure that I fall short of 52 drinks/year. I wouldn't necessarily assume that I'm in the majority, but it's not as though my behavior in this area is particularly abnormal.
- Marsymars 5y ago
  I get how one could pretty easily fall into a group of people who drink on a weekly (or more frequent) basis. That being said, of people I'm close to, my parents are a good counter-example. They split one beer every month or so.
  - bigfudge 5y ago
    Out of interest. What do people do at social occasions? What would you do if you met a friend after work on a Friday night? I think we need better options for this in the Uk... most cafes shut and not drinking in a pub still feels weird (and soft drinks are so sweet)
    - yakubin 5y ago
      Pole here. I only drink when I go out with someone, or have a party. Mostly wine, once a couple years vodka. Occasionally, when I have company during lunch, we drink one glass of wine to it. Oftentimes though, when I invite someone over, we don't drink alcohol, I make lemonade or tea. Lemonade with matcha and ice cubes is a great replacement. Maybe more places should offer lemonade? PS. It's not uncommon for me to drink 3 glasses of wine a year. Although recently I've been more social, so it's been 1-2 glasses of wine every 1-2 weeks. I don't go out of my way to drink alcohol, but I also don't avoid it.
    - Marsymars 5y ago
      I've never had much trouble getting alcohol-free drinks at pubs/bars in Canada. More hip places usually have alcohol-free options (alcohol-free beer/cocktails, kombucha, etc.), and less hip places will at least have some kind of bagged herbal tea if you're avoiding caffeine. Bars/pubs will pretty much always have coffee too, even if it's not especially good.

bitexploder 5y ago

I do pretty demanding sport as a hobby. Even one drink during the week greatly impacts recovery and ability to perform and lessens my enjoyment considerably. It’s rather commons in my circles for people to probably average a handful of drinks per year at most.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
If one drink/wk is noticeably affecting you then you're either a professional athlete who's got world class people monitoring their performance or you need to see a doctor. Edit: Assuming the standard definition of drink that's roughly equivalent to one light beer or one shot
- ubercow13 5y ago
  Why? I do a minimal amount of exercise and I can feel the difference if I had one drink the night before. Forget exercise, it’s obvious I had a drink the night before from how I feel as soon as I wake up, just from the degree to which alcohol negatively effects quality of sleep.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  It’s not like I suddenly break down or something. There are a few factors in my sport. BJJ is mostly cardio so I sweat a lot. I train at or close to my limits most of the time. Recovery isn’t as easy at 41. Alcohol depletes just enough from my body and impedes recovery just enough that the next day, I won’t be 100%, and I’ll feel it. Even one drink in the evening is massively disruptive to sleep processes like REM sleep. It depletes key nutrients from muscles, etc. so maybe I’m just a little slower. Then there is the cramping. Replenishing electrolytes when you leak as much of them as I do is hard. There is a really good chance I will get a moderate to severe cramp if I drank the night before. I think you are underestimating how significant a drink can be to someone training hard. Especially someone older, such as myself. You have to make a very large number of assumptions to arrive at your conclusion that is obviously incorrect for many athletes hobbyist or otherwise. Some guys can pull it off, and there are a few in my gym who can drink hard, come in hungover and survive a hard training session. That isn’t me or most people I know (anecdotally).

DeRock 5y ago

I have many friends (and family) most of whom are in no way an alcoholic in AA, that hardly ever (or never) drink. Some just don't enjoy the effects, some prefer not to for health reasons, some just honestly prefer to smoke a joint. The fact that you can't think of a single person like that is equally surprising to me.

dylan604 5y ago

Hi! Nice to meet you. There are weeks when I have 0 drinks per week, and then others where I have lots more. It all depends on mood and activities. Specifically if the smoker is running.

sqqqqrly 5y ago
I'm with you brother. Life is too short. My neighbors and I have been doing Friday night happy hours for almost a year, always outside. Many with a fire going and outside movies shown on the side of my RV. The 6 of us look forward to these. Personally, I couldn't care less what others think of this or how "sustainable" this is.
- jasondigitized 5y ago
  Some might argue life is too short to drink. I personally arrived at that conclusion. To each his own.

hpoe 5y ago

Well for starters you've got all the Muslims and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sometimes know as Mormons. That's two big ole' swathes of people who probably don't drink at all.

lazyasciiart 5y ago
Then you have pregnant women, and women who are trying to conceive, and sometimes their partners will also give up drinking in solidarity....
- mark-r 5y ago
  My wife asked me to stop drinking while she was pregnant, and I complied. I think it backfired though, because I drank more after she gave birth than I ever did before.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

A lot of people don't like alcoholic beverages at all. I have member of my family that despise the taste of alcohol. Then, we have people like myself, and my father, whom self medicate. (I hate the taste of all alcohol. I only drink it for the effect. To the problem drinkers out there, don't even think about going to hard alcohol. Stick to low alcohol beer, and wine. Box wine can have as little as 9% alcohol. Naltrexone seems to help with the cravings if you need to stop.)

pstuart 5y ago
Kratom is a great replacement for alcohol for such use. It has its abuse potential as well, but is zero calorie and hangover-free and doesn't damage your liver. Of course everybody responds differently, but it's been incredibly valuable to me for this need.

ska 5y ago

May be an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias

mythrwy 5y ago

I drink but don't have one drink a week. The vast majority of weeks I have 0 drinks. Once in a great while I might have a couple of drinks (if I'm in the mood) but it's not a regular thing at all. I'm not morally opposed to it and I'm certainly not an alcoholic, I just don't care much for or about it. It's kind of a low level toxin and it feels like it. Is this really that strange? I know a lot of people that very rarely drink and certainly don't habitually, but will have a drink on occasion.

vincent-toups 5y ago

I'm not a non-drinker but I would say I have less than one drink in a typical 4 month period.

munificent 5y ago

I am a drinker. I am very fond of beer, whiskey, and wine. I love the taste of all three. I have a well-stocked liquor cabinet and always have a few beers in the fridge and bottle or wine or two in the kitchen. Even so, in the past few years, I typically consume less than one drink per week. I used to have a nightcap or a beer with dinner pretty frequently. The dinner beer tapered off because I found it made me too sleepy to be on the ball with the evening routine with the kids. The nightcaps started to feel like pointless calories. So these days, I might have a beer or whiskey on the weekend when I watch a movie with my wife. But I rarely drink during the week, and often don't on the weekend. Granted, part of that is from having no ability to socialize the past year. I imagine my consumption will tick up soon. But I still don't expect it to get to more than one or two drinks per week.

dcolkitt 5y ago

Older people drink significantly less than the young. By age 65, more than half Americans are teetotalers.

bigfudge 5y ago
This is partly why alcohol epidemiology is so hard. People drink less in ways correlated with their general health.
inglor_cz 5y ago
By age 65, most heavy drinkers are dead. I once used to visit my friend in a rehab (he pulled it off and now is sober). There were no people over 55 actually, though some 40-somethings looked seventy on the outside. "Oh, either you get sober or you die way, way earlier than the general population," said the nurse when I asked her where the old-timers are. To fit the pattern, my grandpa, a functional alcoholic, died at 57. His brother, who was much more careful with his drink, lived to 87.

jejones3141 5y ago

I wouldn't hazard a guess about the general population based on the people I know. I can, though, talk about my experience. I grew up in what's called the "Bible Belt", so that may have something to do with my not drinking. I had what might be a common experience--as a child expressing curiosity about a beer a relative was drinking, being offered a sip, and spitting it out in disgust, with no interest in a second taste. Much later, a friend invited me and other friends over to a very nice dinner with appropriate wine served with each course. It was good, and all seemed well... until I noticed that I was singing Tom Lehrer's "Masochism Tango" at high volume. The next day what freaked me out was that at every stage I thought myself under control, but clearly I had lost it. I did not want a repetition. Since then I found that there is good tasting beer; I tried a little at a restaurant where they brewed it themselves--but I only tried it the once and didn't finish it. Later I heard that occasional red wine was supposedly good for one's health, and for a while ordered a glass periodically, but I couldn't make myself finish it. Haven't had any for a long time, and now the prescriptions I take preclude further drinking. (Maybe aging baby boomers on prescription drugs bend the curve?)